I've Been Robbed!!!

*** UPDATE ***

I received payment for the use of this image, which goes to show that Perry's staff is willing to correct their mistake. Good on them! I'm glad to see them wanting to fix things without much fuss. Who said all politicians were corrupt? And, now the original post...

I posted a nice little image of Rick Perry last year. You can see it here:

http://janikphotography.blogspot.com/2010/09/photographing-governor-perry.html

The image is available through Splash News, a photo wire service or syndicator. If you want to use it, that's the only place you can get copyright permission, except for directly through me. Today, I saw this on Rick Perry's official facebook page:

I'm waiting to hear back from my editors at Splash, just to make sure a sale of this image didn't go through... maybe it slipped through the cracks or hasn't been added to the sales log yet? However, the sales tracking system doesn't currently show anything, so I am currently under the impression that Perry's people did not legally obtain this image.

If Splash doesn't show it's been sold, and I know that I have never been contacted directly about it, this could be a problem. A simple cease and desist letter won't cut it, as the image has already been picked up by other websites and is being used all over the web with no clue that it was my work. Here is one lampooning the governor:

Hopefully, this issue can be resolved. I'd hate to find out the head of our state would let someone's copyright be trampled upon. Hopefully, he recognizes the importance of protecting our rights to work and benefit from that work, without it being stolen from us. Hopefully, a phone call or letter and an invoice will be all that's needed to clear this up.

Of course, copyright infringement happens all the time, and this should be relatively easy to clear up. I don't hold anything against the governor personally. I'm guessing it was one of his PR people that used the image without permission.